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Opinion

Woes of pensioners

AMiR ALi
THE remarkable pay revision of 1985 with cumulative time scale and other related benefits had improved the financial position of the public servants. This position was further reinforced by the next pay revisions of the BNP and the Awami League governments. But the three pay revisions offered only a pittance of 10 per cent increments to the basic pension. Eventually this discriminatory measures created a wide ranging disparity between the pensioners who had retried prior to 1985 and the pensioners who retired after getting all the benefits of these three liberal pay revisions. A single instance will clearly mani-
fest the gross disparity between the pensioners retiring in three different dates as a consequence of which a first grade officer e.g. a Dy Magistrate and a Munsiff who had retired prior to 1985 have been getting much less pension and gratuity than a 4th grade employee who retired after 1985. Many of these unfortunate pensioners have been undergoing enormous hardship and privations for over two decades without "sound and fury". As all these literally famished and withered pensioners are meek and docile they have scrupulously shunned the path of agitation unlike other vocal associations of discontented public servants as these are quite alien to their thought and practice.
It may be noted here that similar pay revision in India and Pakistan had created such disparity but this anomalies have been removed long since by readjusting the old scale with the new pay scale changing the old scale to bring it at par with the new scale to meet the ends of justice and fairplay. Here also this glaring disparity ought to have been done away with long ago for the dispensation of justice and equity. Numerous representations and appeals to this effect have appeared over the years in our national newspapers for its speedy removal in view of the strictly legal nature of the claims but it miserably failed to evoke the conscience of the successive governments. Though late than never the
National Pay Commission of the Awami League government for the first time adopted a judicious and pragmatic step fully realising the legality of the pensioners' long deferred claims and the awful miseries the lowly pensioners are subjected to. With a view to alleviating the prolonged affliction the commission made two reasonable proposals: (1) one for the 50 per cent increment of the net pensions and (2) the other for the fixation of the pay of the pensioners at the initial of the corresponding presumptive pay of the new scale, 50 per cent of which will be earmarked for the calculation of the gratuity and the remaining 50 per cent pay for calculation of the net pension. Now the pensioners who had
retired after getting the benefits of the three liberal pay revisions are financially better off, the apportionment of the 50 per cent increment of the net pension would do them necessary justice and the apportionment of the benefit of the corresponding presumptive pay of the new scale to those pensioners who had retired prior to 1985 and far beyond that year without getting similar benefits save and except 10 per cent benefit and have been suffering for more than two decades, can reasonably claim benefit of it.
As dire ill luck would have it, it is reported that although the implementation committee of secretaries made no alteration in the recommendation for the public ser-
vants but curiously enough the committee ruthlessly turned down the recommendations in its entirety quite in arbitrary manner adversely effecting the fate of the lowly pensioners at the fag end of their life. "This was the most unkindest cut of all" meted out to the erstwhile responsible public servants that were once the integral part of the administrative machinery toiling day in and day out very diligently in a relatively peaceful manner unlike some of our own progeny in the current administration clamouring with undue haste for accelerated lift.
No elected government anywhere in this sub-continent acted so harshly with the ill-fated pensioners flouting their lawful
demands without the semblance of any valid reasons. This unjust action will ever remain as a classic example of bureaucratic unaccountability and utter lack of human kindness and fellow feeling. The intelligent section of the society pause to think as to how a popular government committed to the democratic principles of accountability and transparency can absolve itself of its obligation of dispensing equitable justice evenly both to the in-service and out-ofservice public servants and even does not desist from creating glaring disparity between earlier and latter pensioners as has been made by the two discriminatory provisions of otherwise a liberal pay revision.
Though frustrated beyond limit by the unprecedented harsh treatment of the committee of the secretaries, the stunned pensioners will not rush with undue haste to the court for seeking the much needed justice not because it is too costly for them and very much time consuming but as a last resort they will prefer an appeal to the ministry of finance and the Hon'ble Prime Minister for kindly adopting afresh the appropriate action to put an end to their continuing sufferings as such steps are off and on taken to meet the end of justice and equity and thereby rightly earn their heartfelt deep gratitude.
Amir Ali is Member, Pensioners' Association, Mymensingh.